Arvind Narayanan — Princeton

I'm a professor of computer science at Princeton University and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy.

I study the societal impact of digital technologies, especially AI.

Office: 308 Sherrerd
609-258-9302
arvindn@cs.princeton.edu
Twitter: @random_walker
LinkedIn: @randomwalker
Newsletter: AI Snake Oil

AI snake oil book and newsletter Read the first chapter online »  

My new book with Sayash Kapoor cuts through AI hype and gives you an essential understanding of how AI works and why it often doesn’t. Get it from Amazon, Bookshop, B&N, or your favorite bookseller.

The book is based on years of research on limits to prediction, the dangers of predictive decision making, the reproducibility crisis in machine learning based science, the limits of large language models, and the risks of social media algorithms.

Our AI Snake Oil newsletter is read by 40,000 researchers, policy makers, journalists, and AI enthusiasts. Subscribe here. We were recognized for the newsletter on the TIME 100 AI list.

Algorithmic amplification on social media

For 2022-23 I was a visiting senior researcher at Columbia's Knight First Amendment Institute, studying how social media algorithms amplify some speech and suppress others. My capstone essay: Understanding Social Media Recommendation Algorithms.

I co-organized a symposium on algorithmic amplification in April 2022 at Columbia University. Watch the videos here.

Fairness and ethics in computing » see more

I coauthored a textbook on fairness and machine learning, available online. My work was among the first to rigorously show how machine learning reflects racial, gender, and other cultural biases. I've also worked on exposing dark patterns online.

Web privacy » see more

I led Princeton's Web Transparency and Accountability Project. Through large-scale, automated web measurement, we uncovered how companies collect and use our personal information. Our open-source tool OpenWPM has enabled over 100 studies of web privacy.


Cryptocurrencies and blockchains » see more

I led the creation of an online course / textbook on cryptocurrencies which has been used in over 150 courses worldwide.

My main interest these days is helping shape public policy to counter the harms of cryptocurrency.

De-anonymization » see more

I've shown how sensitive information can be inferred from seemingly innocuous "anonymized" data, ranging from browsing histories to genomes. See this primer of the research and this policy piece on what it means for privacy.